Iron Man 2

To follow the story of glam industrialist Tony Stark in "Iron Man" was to marvel at his quicksilver ability to invent and then test-ride new versions of rocket-propelled armor.

And boy, was it fun. Who among us didn't spend their childhood scheming to own a jetpack? "Iron Man 2" is a better-than-average follow-up, but Tony doesn't suit up enough. He almost never flies it, except in his splendiferous opening scene and the film's rather underwhelming climax. In between, we find much crackling dialogue organized around strangely half-realized action set pieces.

In fact, Tony spends most of the film's running time dying from advanced palladium toxicity, a result of the coruscating energy source that keeps him alive while it powers his suit. Said fatal condition is revealed at the outset and becomes the excuse for all kinds of drunken and desperate misbehavior, including an unfortunate party incident set to middle-period Queen.

Now, before anyone accuses me of failing to appreciate the Awesomeness That Is Robert Downey Jr., allow me to clarify: There is nothing wrong with him. His Tony Stark is such a giddy mix of high-order corporate narcissism and disco swishiness that, yes, watching him sashay around the movie is a bit like watching John Travolta on the dance floor of "Saturday Night Fever." And Mickey Rourke, tattooed to his toesies as whip-wielding Russian nemesis Ivan Vanko, eats his scenes just by being large and vaguely mutant. He's the only man I've seen who can wear his hair in an up-do and still seem capable of murder.

Jon Favreau returns to the helm with the same chummy ease he brought to the first "Iron Man," letting his actors rattle through Justin Theroux's script with the sort of needling, sexually charged crosstalk that marked the screwball era. Downey and Gwyneth Paltrow (as right-hand gal Pepper Potts) once more spar and sublimate to nice effect. Don Cheadle, replacing Terrence Howard as "Rhodey" Rhodes, gets to fly a suit himself - straight into a bunch of heady moralizing over the military-industrial complex, embodied by Sam Rockwell as a snotty little defense contractor.

Marvel fanatics will groove to Scarlett Johansson and Samuel L. Jackson in small roles linked to the endlessly teased Avengers story line. Those in the non-geek laity might wonder about all of these spare characters and subplots in a movie already teeming with them. They also might question the thought put into, or not put into, most of the action sequences, which lack finesse, end abruptly and employ dubious logic.

-- Advisory: Intense sci-fi action and violence, and some language.

Brilliant Robert Downey Jr. shouldn't settle for being a successful action hero. E6